


Sum Total

by MasterOfAllImagination



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Additional Tags To Be Added As Needed, M/M, Slow Burn, alternating third person limited pov, although i've stolen bits and pieces as they suited me, movie and novelization compliant, not catalyst compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-13 06:38:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9110983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterOfAllImagination/pseuds/MasterOfAllImagination
Summary: Over the course of 26 years spent in each other's company, Galen and Orson fall in and out of hate, but never quite out of love.





	1. 26 BBY i

 

Galen Erso’s eyes slide fitfully over the crowd of heads.  There is a neglected drink in his hand and a buzzing in his cranium that tells him it is best kept that way. Occasionally, a partygoer will do a double-take, recognize him as the night’s honoree, and pause to pump his hand with a free appendage.  Never before has he felt so many different varieties of skin, scales, and other membranous coverings beneath his palm.

The next creature to introduce their skin to Galen’s is a human male, with calluses that Galen notices before he even has a chance to lift his eyes to their accompanying face.

“The man himself at last,” enthuses the stranger.  Galen’s brow contracts in his effort to determine if the man is drunk, or if the slight slur is merely part of his natural speaking patterns.  “An honor.”  One last firm shake and the man relinquishes his grip.

For the thousandth time that night, Galen says, “Thank you.”  But the man lingers instead of moving off, prompting Galen to fill the silence with, “and you are?”

“Apolgies, apologies-- It's just that I've been anticipating this meeting for some time.  Orson Krennic. I go by Orson among friends.”

Galen takes a sip of his drink so he can politely break from Krennic's-- Orson’s?-- unnervingly bright blue irises.  “And are we friends, then?”

A bare hand comes to rest on his arm. “I hope we will be.  May I call you Galen?”

Those eyes are back on his, and then not again; darting here and there around the room but always coming back to Galen, as though the man is looking for something he is not quite able to find. Instead of replying, Galen nods slowly, and watches in fascination as Krennic’s frog-mouth lips part in a smile that rearranges half of his face. Unbidden, Galen feels the corner of his own mouth twitching in response.

“Good. In that case, Galen, I wonder if we could step onto the balcony briefly….” he trails off, looking meaningfully around the room. “I don’t want us to be overhead by the wrong people.”  So saying, he takes a healthy swig of the champagne clutched in the hand that isn’t still resting on Galen’s arm.

Again, Galen wonders whether or not Krennic is drunk.  “What would we be discussing that’s so sensitive we can’t do it here?”

Krennic waves his glass vaguely, pursing his lips and contemplating the ceiling. It seems to be a play-act far more than a drink-addled mind genuinely searching for words, because his pause is far too short before he announces “ _our future,_ ” like it’s a state secret and not the most pompous thing Galen has heard from this entire crowd of academics and hangers-on all night.

And yet, of all the propositions he has also received-- and there have been many; all from employers wanting a piece of the newest Ashgad Prize-winner’s mind-- Krennic’s is the only one that has elicited his interest, even if only for the absurd grandiosity of it.

Mild Coruscanti air mixed with the background noise of the all-hours speeder traffic surrounds them as they step onto the balcony. Krennic unloads his weight heavily onto the railing some distance away from the doors, glancing back in evident expectation that Galen will follow. His glass dangles precariously over the precipitous edge from two lax fingers.

Without looking up, Krennic declares, “I read your paper. It was brilliant.”

Still making his way over, Galen says, “You’re one of the few.”

“Who found it brilliant?”

“Who read it.”

Krennic presses the glass against his grin. “You’ve been noticed by all the right people. Winning the Ashgad is proof enough of that.”

Gently, Galen lowers himself to his forearms some distance from Krennic. “Oh? Who in particular?”

“I’m not allowed to tell you that yet.”

“The ‘yet’ is a bit presumptuous.”

“Not presumptuous,” Krennic insists. “Once you hear my offer, there is no doubt in my mind that you’ll accept.”

Glancing out at the layers of lights rising into the purple-tinged false night, Galen spreads his hands.  The man talks a lot.  “Then by all means, make it.”    

Krennic sucks in a breath and licks his lips. “I want to build it.”

“I’m sorry?”

“ _I want to build it_ ,” Krennic repeats. “The theoretical generator you posited in your paper. The thing we’re all celebrating tonight. I want to turn your absolutely brilliant theory into a marvelous, working piece of technology.”

If Galen had been drinking, he’d have choked.  His heart is fidgeting like an agitated bird against the cage of his ribs. None of the others that night had even come close to hinting at the kind of offer Krennic was making. They all wanted him to build things for _them_ , not the other way around.  He reminds himself to breathe and disguises his deep inhalation as a prelude to speech. “Who’s your backer?”

“The Republic, naturally.”

Ah. Now comes the inevitable rub.  “I work with crystals, not senators.”

“You’d be working with me.”

“How is that better?  I know nothing of you except your name.”

A bristle goes through Krennic as his every limb rearranges itself and settles a centimeter’s distance from where it had rested before.  “Fair enough. I’ll skip the life story: I’m an architect by vocation, but lately my work has taken on larger scale and scope, courtesy of the ambitious goals set out by Chancellor Palpatine’s administration. Goals that are only set to enlarge in the coming years.”

“An architect,” Galen muses, ignoring most of what had come after it.

A guttural noise of affirmation.

“Anything I’d recognize?”

He pats the balustrade lightly. “This building.”

Both of his eyebrows climb. “Really?”

Krennic holds his curious gaze with a small look of mixed self-satisfaction and smugness until Galen has to either laugh or look away. Galen smothers the laugh. “My apologies. I am a scientist. Skepticism is my line of work.”

He puts up a dismissive hand. “I know how stifling it may sound at first to work for a government, even one as mighty and resourceful as the Republic," says, easily launching back into his sales pitch as though never having been diverted. "I had my own doubts at first. But I put them aside easily.” Krennic glances up and down Galen sharply. “You will, too.”

“I’ll need more information.”          

“You’ll consider it, then?”

Before his doubts have time to catch up with his lips-- before the offer, seemingly too good to be true, can float away with the rest of his nocturnal dreaming in the light of day-- Galen finds himself declaring, “I will.”

“Then I hope we will be meeting again sooner rather than later.” Krennic holds out his hand, and after a scant moment, Galen extends his to meet it. Krennic brings his other hand up to envelop Galen’s in both of his, skin mild like the night air.

Instead of overstaying his welcome with meaningless small talk, Krennic strides indoors again, leaving Galen to consider his proposal. All his thoughts flee the party and race back to his apartment, where access to a HoloNet terminal and answers about Krennic and the people he claims to represent await.  

But is he not already standing on Orson Krennic's resume?  The building hosting his Ashgad Prize reception is a newly erected structure amidst one of Coruscant’s up-and-coming residential districts.  Its every panel and light fixtures is tantalizing, tangible evidence not only of Krennic's competence, but also of the influence he must command in order to have won the design contract to begin with.

Shrugging very lightly, he downs Krennic’s abandoned champagne as well as his own before heading back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For me, Catalyst is like that one fanfiction people only read because it's the fic with the highest word count in the archive. Accordingly, I'm ignoring it in favor of constructing a timeline and backstory that will build more satisfyingly to the relationship we saw in the movie and novelization, and to the history between Krennic and Galen suggested by them.
> 
> Huge shout-out to [Ias!](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias) This fic was born from 25,000 words of Skype headcanon-ing (yes, really; I counted) and is as much her brainchild as my own. She will soon be posting her own slow burn for these two; I highly recommend watching out for it.
> 
> For a visual manifesto of my Galennic thirst, follow me on tumblr: terribleoldwhitemen.


	2. 26 BBY ii

At an unholy hour between midnight and sunrise, with a too-familiar headache from lack of sleep hovering silently over him, Galen decides Orson Krennic is a brilliant man.

The source of this decision shimmers from the portable projector in the center of his floor.  It emits four walls and a high ceiling: an architectural rendering for a research facility currently under construction in the affluent Hapes Cluster and the fifth blueprint Galen had examined that night.  He paces around beneath it, the illusion of being physically in the construct betrayed only by the faint lines of his apartment walls perceivable through the blue field lines.

He is no architect himself, but at school, he had dabbled enough to know that Krennic was uncommonly good at his craft.  No girder is misplaced, no square meter under-or over-utilized, the compact spaces of an underground compound somehow rendered spacious by Krennic’s eye for line and proportion.

Galen fiddles with the console and the projector switches to a bird’s eye view.  The intended flow of traffic in the layout is evident, and well-regulated save for a single chokepoint that Krennic seems to have overlooked. Galen puzzles over it for a while, heedless of the actual length of time he spends absorbed as thoroughly as though ensconced in a new engineering journal.  Eventually he rotates the view and consults the specifications for the compound’s proposed uses and realizes that Krennic had left the chokepoint intentionally so that, if built on a politically unstable world, the researchers would have made a small sacrifice of convenience in exchange for a large tactical benefit.

Yet for all that Krennic can do with measurements and blueprints, for all his designs—in turn practical and modest or beautiful and functional— he boasts no awards to his name. No recognition.  None of the glory a man who throws around terms like “our future” and “ambitious goals” would seem to crave.  Galen considers jealousy as an explanation for Krennic’s interest in him and eventually pushes it aside.  The pieces don’t fit.  Why should an architect of his talent, with advisory positions on no less than three of the Chancellor’s policy boards, envy a theoretical crystallographer still living off scholarship money in the lower levels of the city? 

Galen leans back from the sixth architectural holo of the night and scrubs at his eyes for a moment, gaze fixed at nothing. Then it moves to the single shelf in his miniscule apartment, and the Ashgad Prize resting there in its spindly glass glory.  He sympathizes with it. He thinks he is beginning to understand the oddness of being put on a shelf and admired from afar.  Perhaps that was all Krennic wanted of him, after all: a shiny bauble to supplement his own lack of decoration.

Other offers of work are still coming in even at this obscene hour, from all over the galaxy. They show up as small _pings_ in his comm unit that he has been more and more successfully ignoring as the night wears into day.

At last he dismisses the hologram and rises fully to carry out some cursory hygienic rituals before settling into bed, a data pad full of the unread messages in his hand.  As he glances over them, satisfaction settles deep, creating a kind of artificial lethargy. Page after page of people writing about what exactly they’d do in order to secure Galen’s place on this team or that expedition or on the staff of such-and-such university make a very kind lullaby.

Towards the end, just on the edge of consciousness, there’s a message from Orson Krennic, detailing the best way to contact him.

 _In case you find yourself curious,_ it is signed.  The timestamp is only half an hour past. Galen shifts himself slightly more upright in bed, reading it again through the haze of fatigue.  Either the man rises obscenely early, or he, too, likes to work in the night. There are other explanations for the well-timed arrival of the message, but they hover somewhere out of bounds of his tired mind, obscured by the lingering ghosts of architectural holograms and old Republic records.

Galen sleeps.

               

In the morning, he contacts Krennic.

“I’m being courted more fervently than a widowed queen,” Galen says, lightness masking his subtle challenge. Yet Krennic gamely returns it.

“My kingdom is richer than all of theirs combined.” 

So the slight slurring of his speech wasn’t the alcohol after all.  Galen can’t place the origin of the accent, but he supposes, since he has one of his own, that it doesn’t matter.  Folding his hands out of sight of the waist-up hologram, Galen mentions, “Terrinz Industries is offering me two million credits per annum to run their renewable energy plant.”

Krennic purses his lips. “Unfortunately, I cannot match their salary offer.” 

Galen glances away. “Unfortunately indeed. You lead me to believe--”

“I can, however, offer you something you might value more.”  Krennic cuts over.  He savors the pause between bait and hook like an expert fisherman, and Galen’s mouth half-open to complete the picture before he realizes it and seals his lips. “I can offer you access to kyber crystal.”

Galen’s eyes shoot back to the flickering blue hologram. “No you can’t,” he dismisses.

“Oh, but I can.”

“Only the Jedi have access to kyber. And they don’t share. Trust me,” Galen adds, letting bitterness give weight to his words, “I’ve tried.”

Krennic makes a small noise from between his teeth. “In light of kyber’s capabilities, can you blame them?”

“I suppose not. And yet you expect me to believe they would entrust it to a group of squabbling leaders, all beholden to the agendas of their homeworlds?”

“Not to the Senators themselves. To the Corps of Engineers--” and to Galen, Krennic seems to stand a little taller-- “and those within their ranks who have proven themselves capable of _responsibly_ studying them.”  A pause. “All you have to do is say yes, and you may count yourself as one of us.”

“The Senate and those who serve it are corrupt,” he insists, but it is a feeble thing; the last thing he needs to hear Krennic deny before he can acquiesce with a clear conscience.  Stories of indulgences perpetrated by Senators all the way down to the most minor Republic functionaries were rife even back on Grange, but they had not stopped Galen from emigrating to Coruscant to further his education, nor had witnessing them first-hand spurred any interest in him to leave again. 

“To some viewpoints. But they share a goal with you and I: to bring your energy theories off the page and into the galaxy’s hands.” As if to demonstrate, he curls his left hand into a fist where the holo projector can clearly capture and relay it.

Compunctions slip away from Galen’s mind at last like suds washed down a drain.  There is something hypnotizing in Krennic’s surety.  But just to make sure he isn’t leaving anything on the table—to assuage the last vestiges of logic ringing in the back of his mind that tell him he should cover all his bases before throwing away the security of two million credits per annum to use as he pleases—he asks, “Is the Republic willing to commit the resources necessary to do this?”

“The Republic _is_ rich, Galen.”

“Yes, but--”

“Give me a list,” Krennic drawls, “and it’s yours.”

Galen does.

* * *

 

“The youngest-ever Ashgad Prize winner,” Amedda repeats.

Having spent hours reading every single piece of research Galen had ever published—and some he had not—the description is a gross simplification, but Orson restrains himself to a nod.

“Human?”

“Of course.”

“Good.  Now tell me how you managed to win over such a sought-after individual to our cause.”

“The material I showed him piqued his interest,” Orson lies.  He had _shown_ him nothing, but he had _told_ him one of the Corp of Engineer's most closely guarded secrets: that they had access to kyber.  A calculation that had paid dividends far beyond what he’d hoped.

“What material was this that would have been fit for the eyes of a layman yet able to _pique the interest_ of a capable scientist?”

“I--” _resent your tone_ \-- “was very careful,” Orson grits out.  A smile that feels nearly natural follows.

“He _is_ young,” Amedda observes, glancing out the window as if the whole meeting bores him to distraction.  As if Orson is not worth his time.  

“He and I are of an age,” Orson points out, “and I don’t think I have ever given you, nor any other member of the Strategic Advisory Group, reason to doubt my competence.”

“I would not question your competence on the basis of your _age_ , Krennic.”

Orson’s hands clench and unclench over his knees, leaving sweaty marks against the grey fabric.  His eyes wander like Amedda’s for a moment.  “Galen Erso will put all your fears to rest. You have my word.”

Amedda’s horns dip as he regards him. “I would rather have your results.”

“Those, too.”

“Very well.” Amedda swipes the security authorization data pad toward him, leaves his electronic signature, and tosses it back to Krennic, whose reflexes barely manage to save it from sliding over the edge of the desk and onto the floor. He thanks Amedda as he stands up, so that the respect he knows he won’t find there will not stir his fists to greater mischief than the mere wrinkling of his uniform. Proud, erect, and stately, he leaves the room, data pad clenched tight in his palm, every ounce of resentment and excitement and anticipation pouring into the pressure of his fingertips.

His stride lengthens as he trades ceiling for sky. There is an airbus station a block down from the Senatorial office building, but Orson spares not a glance for it, relishing the way his rhythmic bootfalls mirror his mental energy as kinetic, letting some of it bleed away into the heat-sink of Coruscant and leaving behind like a sieve dark little thoughts of the ways he will savor his impending victories.

Each step closer to Galen Erso’s atrocious apartment—for this is news that will have maximum impact when delivered in person—is indeed a step closer to his future, as he’d told Galen at the prize reception.  But the only thing Orson feels he is walking towards in that moment is his own glory.

As the city’s shining boulevards give way to dingier platforms and less neatly attired denizens, Orson grows suspicious that he may also be walking towards his own mugging.  He tugs at his grey Corps uniform and quickens his gait, purpose suffusing his every step in a loudly broadcast signal to _stay away_ that he maintains until standing outside Galen’s door.

Orson activates the chime, steps back, smoothes his hair, and has only to wait mere moments before the door is sliding open.  Galen’s shoulders are staunchly squared, as if preparing to receive a heavy burden. A question spreads over his face. In response, Orson brandishes the data pad and steps over the threshold.

“Was it approved?”

“Amedda didn’t even _read_ it. We’ll have funding, access to state-of-the-art laboratories, allocation for assistants and outside consultants—all you asked for.”  

Galen puts a hand out to the nearest wall.

“Yours, Galen. _Yours_. Your very own sandbox to do with as you will.” 

Galen shakes his head once, eyes somewhere in the carpet.  A small tapeworm of doubt wriggles into his gut when the scientist fails to respond to the monumental gift he has just bestowed on him.  The smallest bribe imaginable had rendered him copies of the competing offers for work lesser minds had plied Galen with, and they were _nothing_ compared to what Orson had wrought for him.  Surely his gratitude should be proportional.

He takes a second to stretch out the tension in his neck before haltingly reaching out to Galen.  The scientist refuses the gesture with a sharp shake of his head.

“Excuse me.  It isn’t every day I’m given a blank check with which to build my life’s work,” he admits.  One hand slides away from the wall where it had supported him, and he straightens, like a beast shaking off the rain.

Reassured now, Orson tries-- but not very hard—to restrain the feral way he wants to grin. “Don’t thank me yet. Thank me later, when the project has revolutionized where and how the galaxy gets its power.” 

When the project has paved the way for other, greater things. When the project has secured Orson's place among the very stars themselves.

After a moment, he clasps Galen firmly on the shoulder, as he’d been intending to all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who've read Catalyst, you can probably see where and how I've taken cues from it. That being said, this fic is by no means a Catalyst rewrite-- (even though the Amedda conversation may have sounded like it ;). It should start diverging pretty soon, but I've found some of its bones to be useful to establish the hierarchy that Krennic and Galen are working with inside pre-Imperial Coruscant.


	3. 26 BBY iii/25 BBY i

It takes three days for Galen’s clearance to come into effect and for his membership in the Corps of Engineers to be made official through all the proper channels. The morning it does—Galen tugging at an unfamiliar uniform—he and Krennic share air transport to the lab, half an hour away and three miles underneath the planet’s crust, and seemingly deeper than that for the strata of buildings they have to descend through first.

Galen picks his eyes up from the specs on the data pad resting on his knee. “This facility isn’t one of yours,” he observes to Krennic.

Seated across from him, Krennic uncrosses his legs and twitches out a smile. “Correct. But I did personally vet the location.”

“Is it safe?”

“Safe?”

“In the event of an accident.”

“Safe for whom?”

Galen pauses before answering. “Us. The people in the structures above. Everyone, I suppose,” he dismisses.

“It has an energy shield in addition to a durasteel shell embedded in the superstructure. I’d hazard it’s safe enough.”

He nods and goes back to the pad, needing to be thorough, if only to have something to do with his eyes other than watch Krennic fidget or see Coruscant growing dimmer and duller as they descend into its depths, like being consumed by some gnawing beast.

Flying has never been a hobby of Galen’s.

“You’re…. familiar with my work, then,” Krennic suddenly says.

“Hm?”

Krennic studies him over the thumb at his lips. Not biting, just resting there, as though in thought. “You recognized that the lab isn’t mine. You must have studied my work to have known.”  And then, as an afterthought: “I’m flattered.”

Galen shrugs. “Of course I did. I had no idea who you were.”

“People don’t usually form impressions based solely on professional endeavours.”

“You did of me.” He sets the data pad aside again and folds his hands over the newly vacated knee, slightly befuddled by Krennic’s line of questioning—surely it wasn’t _un_ reasonable to base his opinion of a man on what drives him, and the results thereof?

“Not _entirely_. I wasn’t _entirely_ sure until we spoke at the prize reception.”

Galen digests this silently.

“You seem disappointed.”

“No,” he ventures, trying to pin down the vague dissatisfaction Krennic’s words had created in him. “I suppose I just don’t like the idea that this opportunity may have been lost to me if I had not been… friendly enough.”

“Why? Are you usually _un_ friendly?”

It takes him a moment, but Galen eventually spots the twinkle in Krennic’s eye. He unfolds his hands and sits back, letting his knees relax a bit, taking his first glance out of the window in several minutes. Artificial light has now kicked in to illuminate the cabin.  Finally, he replies, “Most people would call me reticent.”

Krennic rolls the word in his lisping mouth. “ _Reticent_.” He shakes his head. “No. Can’t say I agree.”

And there’s the twinkle again. Before he can think of whether or not it’s rude to ask, Galen’s mind spits out his curiosity: “Your accent. Where are you from?”

The man crosses his arms. Galen waits. “Lexrul,” he says at last, and Galen feels he’s lucky to have had the answer. Although he isn’t familiar with the world, he makes a mental note to look it up later.

“Grange,” he returns, indicating himself with a wave of his hand.

“I know.” At Galen's frown, he elaborates. “I studied you, too, Galen.  Just as you studied me. You must realize that.”

“It’s only fair,” he allows.

The ship’s floor plating jars before they can say anything further to one another. They've touched down somewhere underground with bright strip lighting visible through the windows.  Rising, Krennic gestures with an arm. “After you.”

And Galen gladly precedes him, rattling the ramp with his bootfalls, trying to adjust to the change in lighting. Everything is washed out, including Krennic’s skin and eyes when he looks back to assure himself that the man—his  _project manager_ , he reminds himself—is following. There had been a floor plan in the data pad, but Galen is having trouble reconciling it with the bright whiteness.

“If you’ll follow me,” Krennic says, coming abreast, “I can show you the facility, introduce you to your staff—“

“No.”

He rounds on him. “No?”

“The crystals,” Galen says, a bit less forcefully. “I want to get started as soon as I can.”

Unexpectedly, a smile spreads on Krennic’s face. “I like the way you think, Galen Erso.”

Hesitantly, Galen smiles back.

 

The kyber  _glows_. There is no other way to describe it, and Galen has to control himself so that he does not snatch it from the hands of the technician who offers it, but rather take it gently. Krennic is close by his shoulder—a bit too close—but it doesn’t register as an annoyance, as it usually would.

The crystal is _warm_. “Radiant heat,” Galen breathes.

“Yes. All the samples we've observed have some small measure of self-generated thermal energy.”

Curious. The crystals, as far as Galen has been able to gather and surmise from spotty research that amounted more often to fairy tales than to fact, are focusing agents. When arranged in a matrix appropriate to their structure, they can near-infinitely refract a single point of energy into an output ten, twenty, a _hundred_ times more powerful than the input. But this fact Galen had not been able to know until he’d felt the thing seeping gentle warmth into his very own palm.

“When can I begin?”

Leaving a slight draft in his wake, Krennic draws away. “Now. He gestures with his hands, as if _shooing_ him. “Go on. I’ll be around, to watch, for these first few weeks, and to help you in any way I’m able.”

Carefully, Galen turns the crystal through a full rotation in his palm. It is uniform throughout its circumference. “And after?”  

“I assume my position in earnest. You research, I administrate.”

Galen squeezes the kyber sharply enough to elicit discomfort and reassure himself that it’s real.  That this is something that he gets to have, that this is actually happening, that it _will continue to happen—_ namely, that in a year or ten or however long it takes, Galen will make his research _work_ , with a blank check and ten highly qualified engineers and staffers at his beck and call, and Krennic to smooth the way for them.  

He looks up at Krennic and grins with all his teeth.

 

At the end of the day, Krennic comes to him and asks to see what he’s done so far. Galen duly hands over several pads of work.  It feels like presenting a still-wet painting for public critique. “These are only preliminary observations,” he clarifies. “Tomorrow I’ll look into testing in earnest and setting up some laboratory constraints.” 

Krennic is still immersed in the first data pad. His eyes move slowly under their lids. Delicately, Galen asks, “how much of this do you…. Understand?”

“All of it,” Krennic snaps. “Just give me time to study it.”

His heart sinks. He shifts his weight, first clasping his hands in front of him, then behind him, feeling the new uniform shift and rasp. “If I have to wait for you to catch up—“

“Did I _ask_ you to wait?”

They hold gazes coolly.

“I believe you,” Galen slowly says. “I believe you, Krennic.”

Krennic inhales deeply and looks at something on the ceiling.  “Orson. Please, it’s Orson, not Krennic. Only my superiors call me Krennic.”

“Then Orson it will be.” 

* * *

_25 BBY, six months later_

* * *

 

Never is it truly night on Coruscant, for never do the city lights truly dim, persistently polluting the darkness like oil pollutes water. The best Orson can achieve is to black out his windows and shut off the emergency lighting. Even then, lying absolutely still abed, he can still _hear_ —faint electronic whirrs, the buzz of circuitry never quite dormant, the vibration of his neighbor’s activities.

It is enough to drive a man to distraction, and more than enough to keep him from sleep.

He wonders—

He swings himself out of bed and crosses to the computer interface, punching several commands without having to look at what his fingers are doing, and waits impatiently for it to return his answer.

“Ah,” he says softly when the screen blinks. “You’re awake.” Another button connects the holounit and sends the ping. He takes a seat and folds his hands in his lap.

Galen’s holoimage hovers out of the console. “Evening.”

“Morning,” Orson corrects.

“Damn.”

Ruefully, Orson nods in agreement, leaning his elbows heavily into the console and lacing his fingers together. “What keeps you from sleep this time, my friend?”

“I could wonder the same of you.”

“Ah, but I asked first.”

Galen glances somewhere out of range of the scanner. He bets it’s a separate holounit, bearing whatever information is currently occupying the not-insignificant percentage of Galen’s mind that Orson has come to know is _always_  theorizing. “The work, as usual.” He pauses. “And you?”

Orson lifts a finger in lazy dismissal.  “Noisy neighbors.” He is too exhausted for a less nebulous explanation.

To his consternation, Galen laughs. “You and I don’t share the same definition of ‘noisy.’”

“Just because _you_ slept through a minor conduit overload doesn’t mean _I_ am oversensitive—“

“Peace, peace,” Galen says, although his voice crackles through the speakers with mirth.

He sits forward and runs his hands along the console. The memory of the overload-- a minor accident; no fault of his own-- had nevertheless settled badly within him, and unnerved him whenever brought up afterwards. Galen doesn’t know that, of course. What would he do with the knowledge of how much worse the accident had nearly been? Nothing but feel guilty. So Orson remains silent, perhaps for too long, because Galen shifts audibly wherever he is sitting, somewhere across the city in his dingy student bedsit.

All is dark in his own room save for the light cast by the holo. He can imagine how he looks to Galen: a shadow-shrouded skull’s head and little else. He sighs.

“Amedda wants to meet tomorrow. Today,” he amends.

“Good, or bad?”

Krennic turns to look out the window, but it is still blacked out, and he doesn’t care enough to reach over and reverse it. “Not good.”

“I’m sorry, Orson.” 

He waves a hand. “It’s not your fault.  The Chancellor demands much of the Republic and its functionaries, of which you and I and Amedda are all counted as part.” It comes off his lips like school-learned rote and feels about as authentic. But this is Galen, and there are certain things Galen cannot know—that rumors of impending war float among those in a position to hear them like old fish on a sea breeze; that Palpatine is not using the Corps for energy research but for potential _weapons_ research; that he himself is currently spearheading the most promising of several similar projects in that area while keeping that fact secret from its head of research, namely Galen.  And they are not moving as quickly towards viability as Amedda had hoped.

So instead he settles for a half-wry declaration: “Some parts are merely valued more than others.” It is a close enough approximation of the truth to convince Galen. He half-regrets calling the man at this hour now that his own weariness is filtering into his consciousness and layering over a tickling reluctance to face the morning.  Again, his silence draws Galen’s discomfort, but he can’t think of anything to break it with. 

“Perhaps I can tell you what I’ve been thinking over,” Galen says quietly.

Krennic’s eyes snap open immediately, despite their growing weight. He sits up. “Yes. Do. Tell me.” 

The man has a slight Grangian accent.  Accents largely annoy Krennic, excluding his own, of course; but he finds Galen’s words are lent a very easy flow by it. Occasionally, Galen trips over a phrase, but it is only through his own eagerness, and no mis-command of Basic.

Once or twice he interjects something that Galen had neglected to consider and the man will fall to silent typing. During one of these silences—a longer one than usual—Orson finds himself nodding off in his chair. 

“I think I have it in me to sleep for a few hours,” he declares, with a heartiness he does not feel. “You should try to as well.”

Galen doesn’t even look up.  “Just one last permutation.”

Orson passes a finger over his bottom lip and then reaches out to disconnect.

He lets the duality of energy’s very nature fill his thoughts as he lies back in bed: ponders the ways in which it can provide power over _things_ and power over _people_ , directly and indirectly, through him and through Galen, through Amedda, through Palpatine himself….

At last, sleep drags him feebly under.           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally starting to move along a bit development-wise! I'm really pleased I was able to get this chapter out in such a timely manner given the start of the semester this week.


	4. 25 BBY ii

Convulsively straightening his gloves, Orson paces in Amedda’s antechamber, red-eyed from lack of sleep and steadfastly ignoring the dirty looks thrown his way by the secretary. His appointment had been scheduled for 14:30 hours, but it is currently 14:50. The bastard is making him _wait_. Bastard, bastard, nearsighted _bastard_.

“Vice Chair Amedda will see you now,” the secretary coolly announces, apropos of nothing except perhaps that the allotted time Amedda has ordered to have him stew has likely elapsed.

“I am a busy man, Amedda,” Orson announces as he enters. “I don’t appreciate having my time wasted.”  It isn’t something he would have dared say six months ago. But things were changing. Back at the lab, prototypes of an energy source capable of being harnessed into a deadly weapon were coalescing into tangibility, and Orson was more and more intoxicated by it every time he let its full potential cross his mind.

“I see you on my schedule, not yours,” Amedda coolly dismisses.

Devoid of any ammunition with which to escalate, Orson can do naught but sit and exchange silent stare for silent stare as he waits—yet _more_ waiting—for the man to get to his point.  After a while, he does, although nothing in his body language preludes it. The man is like a limestone pillar: unaging, unemotive. It makes what he says all the more shocking.

“Your superiors in the Corps wish to promote you. They are pleased with the promise you and your pet scientist show.”

Uncertain which emotion Amedda expects from him in response to the second-hand compliment, Orson’s mouth falls into contortions of mixing smiles and frowns. “Yet you,” he infers, restraining a certain degree of disappointment, “aren’t.”

Amedda rearranges a piece of his elaborate ensemble that had slipped imperceptibly out of place. “You’ve had six months. But by your last report, you are still years away from weaponization.”

“We’re years away from war,” Orson fires back.

“Wars are not predictable.”

“The technology is _sound_ ,” Orson protests. “It is no longer a question of _if_ but _when_. I would have thought that kind of guarantee would carry some weight.”

“In the minds of some, it does. To others….” He shakes his head once. “Not as much.”

Orson leans forward. “Tell me who they are and let me convince them.”

Amedda shakes his head, flangial appendages sliding across his brocade robe. “You do not need to know their names. All you need concern yourself with is staying focused on the goals set forth by myself and the Strategic Advisory Cell.”

Orson leans back, playing with his fingers under the desk and out of Amedda’s line of sight, at war over the pride burgeoning in him at news of his long-deserved promotion—his first in _two years_ —and the nebulous threat of dissatisfaction from on high, in the eyes of those he must eventually please to continue rising. Eventually, he presses his fingers tightly together and presses for clarification:

“….Yet my promotion is to go forward regardless?”

“Fortunately for you, control over that decision is in the hands of the Corps.”

“Fortunately for me,” Orson spits, tired of restraining himself. “Is this all you summoned me for? Some carrot-and-stick routine?” He stands, straightening his gloves where they have slipped out of place from his fiddling, not waiting for an answer or dismissal and not caring what message of insubordination it may send to Amedda.

It takes the entire trip back to the lab for Orson to successfully push down the restlessness churning just below his sternum and replace it with triumph. After all, he _deserves_ triumph. He deserves his promotion, he deserves a night of celebration. Although a night of celebration unshared is merely vanity, so perhaps—

Yes. A night of celebration with _Galen_.

For the first time in hours, he’s smiling.

 

* * *

 

“ _Great_ news!” Orson announces.

Not having heard him approach—not even knowing he’d entered the _lab_ —Galen startles and nearly drops his eye loop.

“Stars, Orson,” Galen grumbles, “give a man some warning.”

Orson favors him with lips trembling in amusement and not an ounce of remorse.  For a man of extremes who tends towards the red side of the dial, Orson’s near-giddiness is a strangely unsettling experience.

“What’s happened,” he asks flatly. “Did Amedda--?”

“Nothing like that.” Orson steps up to him swiftly and squeezes his shoulders, wetting his lips. “I’ve been given a promotion.”

“To what?”

“Commander.”

Blue eyes bore into his, nearly manic with intensity. They ask something from Galen beyond merely his congratulations—which he freely and gladly gives, raising a hand to clasp Orson round the wrist where he still clutches him—but the more nebulous request escapes him, and Orson steps back and banks his fire.

“We’re going out. Table your work and come back to it tomorrow. Tonight—“ he claps his hands together—“we celebrate!”

He pivots on his heel, and for a strange moment, Galen expects him to break into a dance, and it is this inane thought that finally brings a grin spreading over his face. He reaches behind himself without taking his eyes off the joyous sight of Orson and sets down the eye loop, wandering over to a security terminal on the other side of the room and locking down the lab for the night. Then, turning back to Orson, he asks, “Where shall we go?”

“There’s a lovely place an hour’s shuttle from here. The wine is unbelievable, my friend; _un_ believable. You’ll never let an inferior vintage pass your lips ever again.”

The promise of a night passed drinking in Orson’s company seems, to Galen, the highest stroke of genius. His back pops as he stretches. He can’t even remember the last time he took a night off, let alone spent one with someone else.

“But surely you have other friends in the Corps you’d rather—“

Orson tilts his head at him. “Are you not a member of the Corps? Are you not my friend?”

“Yes, but—“ Orson’s eyes twinkle at him. “You know what I mean.”

Lightly, Orson claims, “Galen, I have no _idea_ ,” and Galen is too flattered to protest any more.

Orson assures him repeatedly that he need not dress and that his uniform is sufficient, but when they arrive Galen immediately feels out of place. He and Orson are not the only Republic officers present, but they are by far the lowest in rank. Notwithstanding that three out of four walls are windows, the bar has a claustrophobic feel to it. Something in the timbre of the pervading conversation, or perhaps the way the wait staff won’t make eye contact with him.

But Orson is only inches away from smiling at strangers, and that is so unlike him that Galen can’t bear to ruin his mood by making his discomfort known. So they settle into a booth in the main room and he lets him order for them both. Other officers and a few civilians fill the seats around them to near-capacity, with more streaming in by the minute as the night advances. Stars twinkle out of the windows. When their wine arrives, Orson descends on it like a man parched. Galen partakes more slowly.

“A toast,” Galen announces, and Orson hastens to swallow. “To _Commander_ Krennic.”

Orson smiles. He sits impossibly straight, a hand fiddling around the stem of his glass, pride radiating from every pore as he clicks his glass to Galen’s.

They talk of inconsequential things. It is strange, at first, not having the work as a conversational crutch, nor the dark of their insomnia-driven chats to encourage words. Yet they find them, more and more easily as the night spins onwards, and not entirely as a function of increasing intoxication.

“Back in my school days,” Orson at one point begins, “I remember sneaking out of the dormitories one night and breaking into the studio. I took….” He trails off, seems to remember his thread. “I opened all of my classmates’ project files—all of them, Galen!”

Galen giggles for no reason in particular.

“And I _erased_ them. Every last one. And the backups, too. And then _I erased the surveillance footage!_ ” He sits back and loses what he tries to say next in laughter, that face-rearranging grin Galen is always slightly fascinated to witness. “Of course, I had to erase my own as well, to avoid suspicion. But their _faces_ , Galen!” He leans forward conspiratorially and drawls, “ _Their faces._ Worth all the effort.”

In kind, Galen offers, “Once, I skipped all my classes for three weeks.”

_"No.”_

“ _Yes_. I was nearly expelled. But I was onto something important. Do you want to know what it was?”

Orson nods.

Galen sets down his glass and drops his voice to a whisper, knocking his foot against Orson’s shin in a movement his mind for some reason informs him is a good way to capture his attention. “I had begun working on the paper that won me the Ashgad Prize.”

Orson sits back and licks his lips, whistling lowly. He drinks long, watching Galen from over the rim of his glass. Galen looks around the room, but his eyes flick back to Orson every so often, just to check if he’s still looking. He always is.

Out of the stillness, Orson observes, “Authority never appreciates vision.”

“Agreed.”

“My _superiors_ don’t share the _vision_ of what we’re doing.”

“We?”

Orson flicks a finger back and forth between them. “You. Me. Us.”

“That’s disappointing,” he admits. Yet it doesn’t really register as disappointment on anything but a logical level. Galen takes a long, thoughtful drink of his wine, which is good, just as Orson had promised, but not life-changing. He will still go home and dig out cheap moonshine when he wants a real drink. But this is nice. All of it is nice. Being with Orson is nice, and the glances thrown their way from the other patrons barely even register any more.

Instead, he registers Orson’s pupils and his lax bones. Drink has made his tongue lazy, slurring his speech like the way he remembers him speaking at the Ashgad reception. And it extends to his hands, which wander: drumming on the table, gesturing wildly in the air to punctuate a point.

A sloppy smile creeps over Galen’s face as he regards his friend. “But still, they promoted you.”

Orson waves his hand. “Other superiors.”

“Other superiors?”

The waving hand halts. “Nevermind.”

Galen gives him as hard a look as he can manage under his current level of alcohol—a handful of glasses dot the table—but lets it pass. The man is obviously drunk and confused. So is he, for that matter, because when next he goes to drink his glass is empty, and he’d been _sure_ it was full only a minute past.

He raises a hand with eight fingers swimming on it. “Waiter,” he mumbles.

“ _Waiter_!” Orson cries. “More of this excellent wine for myself and I and—and, and Galen!”

Heads turn in their direction. Through a series of events that Galen is unable to recall in the morning, they find themselves being gently lead out of the establishment, and unrecycled air bracing them enough to thread arms over each other’s shoulders and stumble their way to the nearest airbus station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, playing fast and loose with Catalyst "canon," mainly in the form of borrowed program titles and some hazy guesswork with regards to rank. (In my defense, the costuming department for the original Star Wars movies didn't seem to be able to make up their minds about consistently corresponding rank plaques either.)


	5. 25 BBY iii

By the time he gets there, the heat from the explosion in the lab lingers only as a slight caress against the exposed skin of Orson’s face. It would have been much greater at the point of energy release; enough to scald any similarly bared skin or perhaps even permanently maim. But the two technicians scurrying amidst the mess seem whole enough.

“Out,” he barks to them curtly, jerking a thumb over his shoulder for good measure.  His eyes roam the room, seeking out the architect of this disaster. “ _Galen_ ,” Orson warns, his voice a threatening burr.

Galen, kneeling in shattered kyber crystal fragments, shifts his boot slightly, but doesn’t look up. Sirens still blare around them. Orson crunches his way to a control panel and brings blessed silence to the room, and suddenly the destruction is so much  sharper: the explosion had breached the transparisteel of the containment chamber, embedding dagger-like shards into half the lab’s equipment. It will cost a great deal to replace it all. But before any fixes can be made, Orson must deal with Galen.

The man is only still alive by the grace of whatever sheer dumb _luck_ had lead him to observe the test from the shielded antechamber instead of the lab’s viewing window, or else he’d be lying on the floor in pieces as well, skewered by his own experiment. As he circles slowly towards where Galen crouches, the scientist’s nimble fingers pick a charred fragment from the floor and turn it in the light.

“Incredible. Burnt to a cinder, and yet its living heart still sparkles.” He turns to face Orson at last, the movement rendered crab-like by his posture. “Do you want one?”

Orson buries a hand deep in his hair and turns away, determined not to let Galen see a rage in his face that he will not understand. Distractedly, he answers, “Why would I?”

Shrugging, Galen puts a hand to his knee and stands. “As a souvenir of this success.” Taking a long glance at the light glinting beneath the black, Galen retracts the proffered memento. “And because it is beautiful.”

The man stands there, spouting guileless ignorance, and for the first time in a year Orson looks at him and cannot perceive a single grain of his genius. If the Strategic Advisory Cell were not making such outrageous demands on his time since his promotion, he could have stopped Galen from ever _imagining_ an experiment so reckless, let alone performing it. Yet here they are. Galen holds out the shard again, but Orson makes no move to take it. He begins pacing, crunching shards under his frantic bootfalls, his other hand joining the first in making a mess of his hair.

“Is something wrong?” Galen takes a halting step forward, more careful of his tread than Orson. “The kyber matrix met predictions. I achieved stable energy magnification for 3.4 seconds— _three-point-four seconds_ , my friend.”

As though this should mollify him. As though this fact— _remarkable_ , a distant part of Orson’s brain has to acknowledge—can in any way make up for the cost of it; the millions of credits in illicit deals and smuggling arrangements and government bribes in three sectors lying scattered beneath their feet, irreparable and irreplaceable.

Unable to restrain himself, his vision quickly descending into a haze of red and black, Orson strides quickly to Galen.  Eyes flashing confusion, the man flinches as Orson slaps the crystal from his palm and seizes his wrist, not knowing what to do with it except squeeze as tightly as he can and hiss, “You _imbecile_. You _fool—“_

“Let go,” Galen says, twisting, and Orson does.

Harsh breaths echo in his ears. It takes Orson a moment to realize they’re his. He controls his gasping, but it is useless—breathing is always useless. Instead, he resumes pacing, feeling Galen’s eyes on his back, mind working furiously to find some way to explain himself when all he wants to do is finish the job of the botched experiment and wring the life from Galen’s stubborn neck.

Coldly, Galen declares, “These kybers were never going to be large enough for more serious tests. We need more, and larger, to continue. I’ve done all I can with these. The possibility of their destruction was calculated into the predictions and deemed an acceptable risk.” And, in a move that sends Orson’s core temperature ratcheting up several degrees, he shrugs. “I am certain the Jedi will allow you more, once they’ve seen—“

Orson rounds on him. “ _No!”_

Galen stands ramrod straight.

“You don’t _understand_ ,” Orson spits. “You have no _idea_ what you’ve done; no grasp of what your _eagerness_ has done to _me_ , what the _con—“_ With effort, Orson chokes himself off before he can reveal the lie that Galen’s research is being developed with an interest to keeping poor mining families warm on Outer Rim colonies, and reveal that its real purpose is to potentially weaponize the Republic’s fleet. Blood rises to his face as he contemplates the massive effort it will require to rectify this setback, and to do so in secret.

Bafflingly, Galen’s stricken face begins to clear. He steps towards Orson with a hand extended like a man warily approaching an enraged beast. The hand settles on his shoulder, a lead weight, but then the lead melts and spreads through his bones, and Orson looks up into Galen’s open and near face.

“It’s alright, Orson,” he says. “I’m alright. Look.” He waves a hand vaguely at himself. “Whole and hale.”

Handed an easy out, all Orson can do is take it, fumbling Galen into an embrace so that he will not have to wrestle his uncontrollable face into the concern Galen has mistakenly interpreted. And he intends to stay there only so long as the task requires, but Galen’s arms wrap tight around him, and the liquid lead of this touch spreads deeper in him, weighing him down; and a different anxiety—one buried by the anger at the sight of the shattered kyber—is silenced before Orson has had a chance to listen to it properly.

They draw back. Orson absentmindedly smoothes his hair. “Well, we’ll—we’ll certainly have the funding for more crystal, after this,” he lies. “Three-point-four, you said?”

“Three-point-four,” Galen confirms, grinning. “It was good.”

“Could have been better,” Orson says lightly, tilting his head side-to-side, and now the clouds lift entirely from Galen’s eyes, just as the last of the warmth from his embrace fades from Orson’s limbs. “Let’s get someone in here to clean this mess up.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Galen pick up the kyber shard that Orson had knocked from his hand and pocket it.

* * *

 

Galen draws a single straight line with his nail down the crack between two buttons on the data pad Orson had given him.  A dull brown planetoid blinks at regular intervals on its face. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why can’t the replacement kybers be brought to Coruscant by ship?”

“I don’t trust anyone but you to bring something so valuable back to us from halfway across the galaxy,” Orson says immediately, and Galen feels a swelling sensation in his chest, which he ignores.

“But the work—“

“Will keep. I need time to requisition replacement equipment,” Orson says lightly, “and your mind can work as well on Jedha as it can on Coruscant.”

“You must have some close friends among the Jedi.”

Orson shrugs his shoulders, a brief movement, like trying to unseat a dusting of snow from his clothes. “Not all Jedi are of a mind when it comes to their isolationist practices, whatever they would like us to believe.”

In the frustrating days prior to his introduction to Orson and the Corps, Galen had spoken futilely with several high-placed Jedi of the Order—even gotten so far as a Master in the Jedi Council, to no avail-- and asks, “Any in particular?”

“The ones who matter. The ones who matter.” Orson shrugs again, more decisively this time. “Your shuttle will leave in three days. You’ll be in and out and back in the lab in under a fortnight, I assure you.”

So now Galen finds himself putting an ill-folded blue shirt into a bag, reconsidering, and then replacing it with a red one.

The last time he packed a bag was three years past, and it had merely needed to take him back to Grange for a week—Grange, mild of clime and familiar of scenery, with the option to borrow from his father anything he had forgotten.

This time, he packs for Jedha, a desert world he has no knowledge of beyond a glimpse at a sparse data entry Orson had given him. There will be cold and pilgrims and dust, this he knows. But how cold? How dusty? How best to prepare for what awaits on a largely uncharted world?

Galen had asked Orson this when they had spoken of the trip.

“Have you been?”

“No,” Orson says, turning away and shaking his head. “No.”

“You did not bring the original kybers yourself?”

Orson snaps his head back around. “Nno, I didn’t,” he finishes, dragging out the consonant _n_ against the roof of his mouth. “I arranged it. I didn’t go myself.”

For a long moment, Galen had looked at him, face utterly blank, a confusion churning in his breast that he didn’t understand, much like the sensation he’d experienced after the accident, when Orson had been so needlessly and irrationally angry.

“I wish you were coming,” Galen says.

“You’re the kyber expert, not me.”

Fingering his collar, Galen says, “Ah, but you are the _people_ expert.”

“They’re _Jedi_ , Galen,” Orson soothes, brushing an absentminded hand down the outside of Galen’s fidgeting arm. “They get along with everyone. Even you.”

Begrudgingly, Galen half-smiles. “All the same.”

The conversation had not helped illuminate what he’d needed to _pack_. Galen glances at the time.  The shuttle is scheduled to leave in an hour, and Galen has already said his goodbyes—or good _bye_ , rather—to Orson, who had clasped his hands behind him and smiled and wished him speed, and when Galen had walked away he’d turned and caught him staring keenly back.

The open maw of his bag gapes up at him. Already packed are an assortment of data pads and rods, testing equipment to ensure that the kyber provided by Orson’s contact within the Jedi Order are up to required standards, and a pair of old boots too ragged to pass Corps uniform code.  

Galen checks the time again and curses himself softly for putting off packing until the doorstep of his actual departure. With a deep breath, he zips the bag, shoulders its awkward half-filled weight, and takes the first step of the long and lonely trip to Jedha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it turns out I’ll still be updating this as I go. I’m clearly just screaming into the void at this point, but god dammit, I like the sound of my own voice.


End file.
